Call After Midnight - by Tess Gerritsen

Call After Midnight is my first Tess Gerritsen book. Gerritsen was recommended to me by the same person who insisted I read the JD Robb collection, so I had to give it a go. 

Call After Midnight tells the story of Simon Dance (alias Geoffrey Fontaine), who fakes his death in a Berlin hotel room. His wife, Sarah, searches for the truth and is led on an espionage chase around Europe. Alongside her is the dependable Mick O'Hara of the US State Department, helping her find her husband.

Gerritsen combines romance, action, and violence into a neatly packed 250 pages. However, this also results in the character substance slightly lacking. The characters were stock and not very believable. The plot was quite standard, but well thought through.

Although I found Sarah irritating and two-dimensional, I enjoyed Nick's character. He was the most rounded character of the book, and the most believable.

Gerritsen writes the suspense/thriller parts of the book well, and the plot twists ensure pages are kept turned. However, I found that the book read as more of a romance/romantic thriller, than a pure crime thriller/espionage story.

Although I wasn't too impressed, Gerritsen did leave me with enough that I am now reading the first of her Rizzoli and Isles series (The Surgeon), which I am finding a lot more enjoyable. 

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Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Mira Books

Date of publication: 1st July 2001

Pages: 256

My rating: 3 out of 5

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